Week of 05/11/2008 - 00:00 to 05/17/2008 - 23:59

I was a guest on the "No Carrier" podcast over at Galaxycow. It's about an hour long show, so download it and listen on your commute!

I've just finished building what is soon to become my new primary MySQL server. It's a dual CPU, dual-core AMD64 running at 2 GHz each. I've put 8 GB of RAM in it right now, but the board will support up to 64 GB. It's running three Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA drives in a Linux RAID 0 (striping) for performance. No, there's not a mirror or checksum because not only will it have daily off-machine backups but will also be replicating to a backup database server when it's up and running.

I've configured network bonding, so it effectively has a 2 Gbps connection to the network. Right now I'm doing some serious load testing on the Raptor's since I've had issues in the past with them on another chipset motherboard. So far so good!

Verizon Wireless announces they will be releasing Linux based cellphones next year.

We'll see how it plays out, but overall it's good news for embedded Linux.

After a discussion of the war today, I decided to do a little informal research into the Iraqi war and casualties to compare it to other armed conflicts.

Here's a few tidbits for you. All numbers are approximate and come from sources such as the Iraqi Body Count project, Wikipedia and other fairly reputable Internet news sources.

Coalition military deaths to date: 4,228
US Portion of coalition deaths: 3,921. That's 3,921 US soldiers killed in combat since we started.

In contrast:
Chinese May 12th, 2008 Earthquake: 60,560 dead, may rise as high as 80,000
Vietnam war casualties: Approximately 60,000 US Soldiers killed or missing.